Garlic, The Wonder Food

A clove of garlic a day keeps cancer away. But it does more than that. It also keeps the possibility of a love life away! Take heart however. There's always Close Up to remedy the situation!

Garlic contains a chemical called Allicin, which has already proved to have numerous health benefits. A team of Israeli scientists recently used this chemical to successfully kill cancer cells as well as malignant tumors in mice. Allicin is not present in an unbroken clove of garlic. It only gets released when the clove is crushed, so when using garlic in cooking, make sure you crush it and use it. Don't add the entire unbroken clove in your food, as though this will give you the flavour of garlic, it will not provide you with the benefits of its anti-carcinogenic properties. The clove needs to be damaged, so it is more effective crushed than cut. When crushed garlic is added to a dish, any parasites, bacteria or other microbes get killed even before the temperature kills them, so if you are worried about eating outside food - the safest option would be to order food with a strong garlic flavour. Chances of food poisoning would be slim! Garlic, as we all know or should be knowing, is a natural antiseptic, and eating a clove of garlic a day also helps ward off most infections.

Italians and Chinese eat plenty of garlic in their food, and have very low incidences of cancer. Pizzas and pastas, Italian dishes rich in maida and cheese, have liberal dozes of garlic, with the result that Italians seem relatively immune to other problems associated with such a diet such as high cholesterol and heart ailments. Similarly, Chinese food is rich in garlic, and the Chinese too are statistically less prone to cancer and heart ailments.

How should you eat the clove?

Needless to say, crushing a clove of garlic and eating it raw would not be the most pleasant of experiences. Garlic has a very strong flavour, and it needs to be mixed with other foods in order to be enjoyed. The best way to eat garlic would be to add it in food while cooking it. Allicin gets distributed throughout the meal, providing you with the benefits of its anti-carcinogenic and antiseptic properties.

Make sure you peel the garlic before cooking it. Cooking garlic in its peel destroys its curative properties. Similarly, peeling the garlic days before and crushing and storing all the crushed garlic together to be used a little at a time may be very convenient as a time saver, but you lose many of garlic's potent health properties. The natural compound of Allicin as found in garlic loses its beneficial properties within hours because it begins to react with garlic's other components as soon as the clove is crushed.

Peel the garlic and let it sit for fifteen minutes before cooking. Just before cooking, crush it. Consume soon after.

While you can get garlic supplements if you are looking for the easier way out, it is highly recommended that you get your daily doze of garlic the natural way - through the clove itself. As already mentioned, garlic has numerous other health benefits, and eating the garlic fresh would give you all these benefits. If you can consume the garlic raw, there's nothing like it! Peel it, crush it fifteen minutes later and down it, followed by a little milk. Do this every night - so you will not smell of garlic the entire day. Before long, you will see your health and immunity improve, and you needn't fear cancer again.